


The Lies I Tell Myself

by coaster



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Civil War (Marvel), Evil Steve Rogers, M/M, Mild Gore, Villain Steve Rogers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:36:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaster/pseuds/coaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a different universe, Tony took the bullet meant for Steve. It didn’t go as he would’ve wanted it to.</p><p>~</p><p>It didn't go as Steve would have wanted it to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lies I Tell Myself

**Author's Note:**

> In another universe, Steve Rogers and Natasha Stark's romantic involvement deterred what would have been a full out war between friends and heroes. This universe did not benefit from such an involvement.
> 
> Or in other words, I had thoughts and I wrote them. This takes place in some ambiguous universe adjacent to 616. Maybe a little in line with MCU in terms of the details of the bill they're fighting over? I was aiming for 616 characterization. 
> 
> This isn't really a happy story because nobody is happy in here, I'm sorry :(
> 
> I also want to use this to fill the Villain AU square on my Cap-Iron Man bingo card.
> 
> I hope you enjoy(?)!

 

 

There were no clouds, no rain, no thunderstorm to punctuate the moment when it had happened. There were none of the protesters denouncing Captain America as a hero of their nation, no radicals calling for the blood of the rogue capes, no adoring fans screaming their love for Iron Man. Captain America was not the hero but the villain. Captain America had brought destruction and fear to a country, a world full of people who had believed in him. Iron Man had been the poor hero who’d tried to stop the Captain’s rampage and had only barely survived to emerge as the savior and victor.

And then the selfless martyr.

This was how war was always written, with the winners on a pedestal and the losers cast to damnation. No one ever remembered why a war began until it was too late. Steve knew this intimately; he’d died for his country, in a war that would have taken more lives than if he had not. It had been a small price to pay, to lose all that he held dear in a past life and to live on without it in this new one. He’d been elevated to something close to sainthood, the deaths of millions swept aside to wave his exploits of bravery as a symbol of victory and superiority. Steve hated it, hated the lies, but he’d lived with it because in the end, it had been worth it.

And he thought he’d made friends in this new life. Over time, they’d brushed the title aside and treated him like just any other hero wanting to do _good_ in this new world. He’d made friends who’d treated him like a normal human being, and maybe that had been the problem all along.

“You could look less like you’re going to your execution,” Ton—Stark said from across the back seat of the car.

Steve stopped pretending to ignore the man and looked up from staring at his knees. Stark had his Face on, the one of insouciant detachment. It was a face he usually fronted for people he didn’t like.

Steve didn’t know if it should have hurt to be on the receiving end of it.

“And you could stop pretending it’s anything but,” Steve bit out. They both knew Tony’s work would be easier if Steve was gone from the picture permanently.

Stark shrugged, the movement carefully smooth, and returned to looking out the car window at the passing scenery. There was a muscle ticking in his jaw, a giveaway that he was feeling anything other than indifference. Or it could be him trying to conceal the pain Steve knew he was in. It had been a week ago but Steve knew where every one of the hurts were spread across Ton—across Stark’s body. After all, he was the one to have put them there.

The mottled bruises on Stark’s face and neck were expertly covered with makeup and the worst of the swelling hidden just behind the convenient fall of his hair. He held himself with the poise of a man used to concealing the sting and burn of breathing and moving with broken ribs and a body half covered in stitches. The only outward indication that Tony Stark had been physically affected by this little War at all was the fully casted arm straining the sleeves of the immaculately pressed jacket, the glove covering the hand, and a small hitch in his step.

Stark could have played it up, could have exposed his face, could have had his arm in a sling, could have been using a cane or crutch like he clearly needed to. They could have paraded Steve in public, in front of the people, the “fans”, but no. They were being driven in a nondescript, armored vehicle to an undisclosed location where Steve could be held until his trial. Held, or maybe made to disappear. Steve wouldn’t put it past Stark to do the latter, but Steve himself was a man of his word and he wouldn’t pull any tricks to escape; he’d earned his place in this car and he knew it.

The sky continued to be blue and the drive continued to be smooth. And Stark continued to pretend that they had been anything but the best of friends and something more.

“They won’t be harsh on you,” Stark said.

Steve snorted. “I know what I did.”

“And I know what _I_ did,” Stark shot back. There was finally a spark of life in his voice and Steve couldn’t help but pay it his attention. Not like what he hadn’t done, so many times during the War.

“You operated within the law,” Steve said. “No one can say the same for me.”

“You were cornered. You didn’t have a choice.”

Neither of them remarked on how this conversation was the exact reversal of roles from a week ago.

Steve shifted in his seat, his first movement since he got in the car over half an hour ago. He adjusted his clamped wrists behind his back and turned a little to face Stark.

“My choice was to sign myself up as an attack dog for the government, or to not. It wasn’t a hard choice and I stick by it.”

Stark clenched his fist on the seat between them – his uninjured hand. “Disingenuous as always,” he said. He turned to face Steve fully, and Steve caught sight of a wince at the corner of his mouth. “It’s a work in progress and the people wanted accountability for the death and destruction that tends to follow in your—in our wake.” Steve snorted at that, lips curled in disgust but Tony continued, unhindered. “You can’t tell me you want us to walk away without consequence every time we happen to level a building full of people?”

Steve turned a little and shook his bound wrists at Stark with meaning. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Stark frowned didn’t reply. He sat back with another wince, a sign he wasn’t holding to his composure. “No one died this time,” Stark said in a tired voice. “There were a few still in critical when I last checked but everyone is going to make it.”

Steve closed his eyes. He hadn’t—he knew it was mostly why he was here but he hadn’t thought about it like that. He knew he should be relieved. His case would be easier because of it.

He’d lost sight of the fight at the end; it had been him against them, him saying “no” and Stark saying “please”. He’d forgotten why he’d picked up the shield in the first place. He’d destroyed the goodwill and trust of the people he was supposed to protect and he had cast himself as the righteous and rewritten the history in his own head to achieve a victory he didn’t get.

Steve opened his eyes and looked at Star—Tony properly for the first time since his incarceration. There were lines on his face where there shouldn’t be. The set of his shoulders were from more than just pain, and his stillness was a jarring contrast to the animated antics of the man Steve had in his memories.

Steve should want to salvage their ruin of a relationship. Tony had been his, once. Steve didn’t have the privilege of calling him that anymore.

“How’re your ribs?” Steve asked.

“Fine.”

Steve looked away. “Your leg?”

“Healing.”

“Your arm?”

There was a beat before the reply. “It’ll function.”

Steve remembered the way the Iron Man gauntlet had been crushed between his fingers. There hadn’t been blood and he hadn’t heard a scream from the thrown back helmet. Steve had wanted that faceplate up, then. He had wanted to feel Tony’s flesh give way beneath his fist. He had tried to pry Tony out of his shell using his hands and his shield. Tony had always been stronger than him in the armor and Steve knew all the vulnerable points to hit. It should have made him stop, when Tony hadn’t fought back even before his armor had been battered and showing more man than machine. He hadn’t stopped. He should have.

Tony shouldn’t even be the one escorting him to his new cell, shouldn’t even be out of bed. Tony should be afraid of him. Tony should hate him—probably did hate him. Once upon a time, Steve would have kissed the injuries away amid playful protests. He would have doted and pampered and laughed and touched. They would have talked, argued, talked more, and come to an understanding.

Steve closed his eyes again and counted each of Tony’s uneven breaths. He didn’t hate Tony, but he hated what Tony was fighting for. This, him, the greatest casualty of their little War. The time passed in silence again and Steve never mustered up the courage to ask any more questions. To _talk_.

They stopped outside an imposing concrete building sunken into the ground on the outskirts of a small town. Tony dropped out of the parked vehicle with careful grace and Steve was allowed to leave a moment later when the magnets on the anklets of his feet freed their hold.

The sky was still blue and there was an unarmored Tony and himself, and only a few armed guards from their convoy. He didn’t know if he would have put this amount of trust in Tony had their positions been reversed. He could run. He could knock the guards down, easy. But he wouldn’t because he still had his honor intact.

A handful of the prison’s guards marched up toward them from the compound and moved to surround Steve. Tony held up a hand as one approached with another set of cuffs and something that looked like a collar. “Can you give us a minute,” he said in their direction. “Two, tops.”

The guards hesitated, but nodded and backed away. Steve remembered that Tony and Richards had been the ones to set up this prison in the first place. Fitting, how he was always going to be surrounded by Tony from now on. He should hate it.

Tony turned back to Steve and stepped in close. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said in a low voice. “That much I can promise. I’m still working on the Act. I’ll have it reinstated without the sharp edges. It’ll be worth it, Steve. You’ll like it. Everything you hated about it was already gone from the second draft. It’ll help everyone. It’ll get the kids the training they need. It’ll give the civilians the protection they should have had. I know it’s right, Steve. Don’t—“ Tony cut himself off and shook his head hard. “Don’t do anything stupid. The trial’s scheduled for some time in the next fourteen days but if you can make a statement for your followers still out there it would help your case. A lot.”

 _Don’t do anything stupid._ It had been a playful phrase between them, once. Another thing sullied by this entire War between supposed heroes. Steve could help himself and help Tony – he knew Sam and Bucky were the greatest thorns in Tony’s side out there right now – but he wasn’t a liar and he wasn’t going to let Tony make him one.

“The answer’s still no, Stark.”

Tony flinched back from him at that and Steve felt a moment of both triumph and regret at the look of hurt on his face. The mask of indifference was back on in the next instant and Tony stepped away.

“It’ll be worth it, _Captain_.”

Once upon a very long time ago, when Steve had taken Tony’s hand for the first time, shy and determined in the same breath, he’d thought it would be worth it. They had their differences but they were like two puzzle pieces finally put together on the board. Steve had let Tony in close to himself, and he’d thought he’d finally broken through the shell of Tony’s usual distance. They’d been good together. They’d worked well together even before they’d fallen in to bed together, and Steve—Steve missed those simple days. Or maybe he missed the days of having his opinions go unchallenged.

Now Tony’s shell was cracked beyond repair – by Steve – and Steve’s future was, once again, a new life at the cost of losing everything he’d loved in this old one. He didn’t know if it was worth it, this time around.

He realized Tony was waiting for a response from him.

“You do what you have to,” Steve said flatly. “Leave me out of it.” He stared into the distance, unwilling to see Tony’s face again. Best to start this new life without more memories.

Tony didn’t say anything further and he turned away from Steve once again, walked away. Maybe for the last time. Steve wanted it to be the last time. He knew he’d lost this War, lost everything to it and he wanted to start anew. He didn’t want to see what this world would become without him there to curb the insanity.

What he wouldn’t give to be put into the ice again, or to see this War end any other way.

Steve took one step forward and heard a gasp. Ahead of him, Tony turned back, a real terror in his eyes, and lunged.

There was the sound of a single distant gunshot – something hit the car behind Steve – and Tony let out a pained choke and coughed into Steve’s neck.

Something wet and warm splattered onto Steve’s skin.

The world tilted in slow motion and Steve was staring up at the haloed blue sky, the rough asphalt beneath him, Tony’s weight on top of him, Tony’s good hand weakly grasping at the sleeve of his bound arm. And Steve’s world narrowed; he cast away the panicked shouting of the guards, the searing heat of the ground, the million implications, and he focused on the dwindling labored gasping of Tony’s breath and the pooling wet warmth at his neck and chest, trying to catch those last words.

Somewhere, a deity was probably laughing at him and counting their unexpectedly doubled dues. It took two to fight a war. And the same two to end the war. It took one stupid wish and the payment of the one last thing he didn’t know he still had. Something he never would have given.

_“Don’t….”_

Tony had stilled and was limp on top of him, draped as if they were in bed on a lazy Sunday morning that Steve would never experience again. Steve wished it would rain; he wanted the cover, the mask of wetness on his face as an excuse. He wanted his arms unbound, he wanted to hold Tony to him, sooth him, lie to him and tell him he’d make the sacrifice worth everything. He pressed his cheek to the curls of Tony’s hair above his ear and whispered all the things he’d left unsaid between them. His heart pumped the last of its blood, mingling the last flows of his and Tony’s life together as Tony’s name passed between his lips one final time.

It was fitting, in the very end. He wouldn’t have wanted to live in this world without Tony anyway.

 

 

*

 

 

**

 

 

***

 

 

**

 

 

*

 

 

_Years later_

 

“Commander,” his soldier said. “We’ve prepped the next one.”

Steve turned from the window and strode past the straight-faced soldier into the dark corridor. The walls were bare, the tiles on the floor colorless. He brushed a finger along the smooth paint of the walls as he approached the interrogation room. His fingers tapped out a familiar tune from a long time ago, from someone he’d let them think he’d forgotten. The soldier marching behind him opened the door at his command and he stepped in, eyes on the scant contents on the room first and not on the spotlit figure hunched and tied to the chair in the middle.

“How’ve my boys been treating you, agent?” Steve said after the door closed behind him again. He avoided the patches of dried blood, old and new, and dropped into the only other chair into the room, careless and carefree.

The agent looked up, eyes widening as he caught sight of Steve just within the fringes of the yellow light. Steve knew him, had once trained with him in his previous life. He didn’t deserve a name from Steve anymore.

“Cap—“

Steve backhanded the agent and frowned in distaste at the four bloody gouges newly opened on the man’s face. He didn’t like the blood.

Taking a wet cloth from the trolley just outside the light, Steve wiped away the blood from his glove. He let the agent breathe through the pain, let him absorb the exchange.

“Com...mander.”

Steve smiled. Correct. “So, agent,” he said cheerfully, “you know what I’m after. You’d do well to give it to me.”

The agent spat out another mouthful of blood and frowned. “Why do you want to know?”

Steve nudged at the shattered ankle of the agent and watched curiously as the man screamed through gritted teeth. He kicked it again for good measure, then stood to pace just outside the cone of light.

“Just a set of coordinates. A name. A place,” Steve said. He fiddled with the cuffs of his navy uniform as he walked in a circle. Tony had always liked it when he wore blue. Another slow circle, and the agent finally spoke up again.

“How do you know we haven’t just gotten rid of it entirely?”

Steve saw red. He reached behind the agent and fisted his hair, pulling his head back to stare up at Steve. Steve could smell the blood and sweat on the man, and the tang of something bitter that was terror, as appropriate. He was glad he had his men shave this agent before they gave him to Steve. At a certain angle, he could have almost pretended the man was someone else.

The thought was like salt on his wounds and he gripped the hair tighter, pulling out strands, and stroked roughly at the bloody, gouged cheeks. The teeth-baring screams cleared Steve’s thoughts and memories for a second, grounding him again.

“I know,” Steve snarled. He threw the agent’s head away from him and returned to his pacing, picking up the cloth to wipe his fingers clean as he passed the trolley. “Where did you move it?”

“What are you planning to do once you have him?”

Steve clicked his tongue and watched in amusement as the agent tensed in the chair, expecting another blow. Most of them were easily cowed in his presence. Most of them knew what he was, who he was, what he did. Few of them had known him well before—before.

“Coordinates, agent,” Steve prompted again. He picked up a knife from the trolley as he passed it. A blunt thing, it was, dulled with neglect and overuse. Just something to direct the real strength that would be behind it.

“Please, Ste—“

Steve rammed the knife straight down behind the clavicle of the agent’s shoulder. The scream that followed was satisfying, if nauseating. Steve really didn’t like blood. He left the knife in and simply watched as the agent squirmed in pain, gurgling as half his lungs and the spaces around it filled with blood. Good. Only one person could call him those names anymore.

“I’ve got a good medical team,” Steve said. He reached forward and poked at the injured right shoulder. The agent rose a few pegs in his estimates by not screaming at the gesture. “Tell me, and I can get you patched up and send you off.”

The agent huffed out a laugh at the lie, still breathing hard. They were well trained, Steve knew. This new life needed tougher enforcers and SHIELD had done an admirable job of breeding them. Too bad they weren’t as tough as the capes. As tough as Steve.

“Think about your next answer,” Steve said. He sat back into the chair and crossed one leg over the other, hands clasped, waiting.

The agent coughed and groaned and grimaced as each movement brought about more pain. A small amount of blood was soaking through the shoulder of the black uniform and the rest was dribbling down his chin as he wheezed. Too bad the blood was necessary.

“He…I…” the agent tried to say before his breath was taken by the blood again. Steve took the dirty cloth from the trolley and wiped the blood from the agent’s mouth. He dropped it on the handle of the knife after he was done and kept his eyes away from the red-stained teeth that bared at him.

“I don’t…know,” the agent gritted out.

Steve clicked his tongue again and sat back, his toe nudging at the agent’s knee. “You know what that answer gets you.”

“I don’t know.”

Steve studied his glove again, checking for bloody residues. “Last chance.”

“I don’t know.”

Steve leaned in, letting the light catch the sharp lines of his brows and cheek, his nose. His curled lips as he smiled at the agent. “Last. Chance.”

“Stev—“

Steve picked up the gun on the trolley and shot the agent between the eyes. A small drop of blood landed on his own cheek and the white star on his chest. He picked up another clean cloth and scrubbed it away. The door behind him opened moments later and his soldiers began the clean-up and prep for the next one. There was still a handful left; one of them would know and one of them would break.

He stood and nodded at his well-trained soldiers as they put the room to order again, scrubbing out the worst of the blood and brain from the chair and the floor.

Back in the room, his observation room, he stared out into the city he’d once loved. It had changed so much, new buildings rising and falling as the powers around them warred over nothing and everything. His was a dying breed. Hunted. Killed. Experimented on. Any one of these buildings around this nest of backstabbing liars could still have a friend or two of his in it. Screaming, dying. He used to fly through the skyscrapers, an armored arm around his ribs as held tight to an armored shoulder. He remembered the laughter and the joy. The smile framed in red and gold. The easy silences and the purposeful days. The lazy afternoons and the heated nights.

Those final words that never made it through the blood and the numbness—

He rubbed at his chest, where the scars still marred the skin. The scar from the wound that should have killed him. That should have let him die with Ton—

Steve let his mind drift and he dreamed.

He was going to find Tony. Bring him back. Put him back at Steve’s side. And they would make the world right again, together. Put it to how it should have been, if they had only worked together all those years ago.

It would all be worth it.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know your thoughts.
> 
> Here is a [convenient tumblr post](http://coastertoaster.tumblr.com/post/140429567155/fic-the-lies-i-tell-myself-by-coaster-in-a) if you wish to share the story.


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